Why build it if you are just reading? I find https://source.chromium.org/chromium wonderful. With things like go-to-definition and find-all-overridden-functions working wonderfully well.

I find this to be ideal when working with a large codebase. I don't even need an editor with fancy intelligence features and LSP integration; a bare bones vim or emacs paired with a website with all the intelligence already there.

> Why build it if you are just reading?

Is this a serious question? Assuming it is, to insert printf statement, or attach a debugger and step through the program and take backtraces to supplement or confirm the information you gather from reading the code.

Yes it's a serious question. And no, "reading" doesn't involve inserting printf statements or taking backtraces. These are different activities. That's called debugging and not reading.

The OP's scenario is being curious how Chromium does something: so it suffices to find the relevant snippet and then copy it elsewhere. The Chromium code is assumed to be already working and does not need debugging.

>The OP's scenario is being curious how Chromium does something: so it suffices to find the relevant snippet and then copy it elsewhere. The Chromium code is assumed to be already working and does not need debugging.

To clear myself of any wrongdoing in regards to copyright :) They had a very nice comment explaining how the workaround works, and we used a different image manipulation library, so I couldn't, and didn't, copy it as is.

So not only it was easy to find the workaround in their huge codebase, they also explained it well so I could replicate it in our codebase from scratch.

My point is that for engineers like myself, it's much easier to read code if I can also have access to debugging features.

> The Chromium code is assumed to be already working and does not need debugging.

Even if it doesn't need debugging, debugging features can help engineers understand the code better.

Sure. Doesn't that depend on the complexity of the code you are looking at though? In many cases you can go through code, find the bit you are looking for and have pretty good idea of what it does. Which sometimes is all you need.

It's a tool. It's never required. Even for complex code. But it's helpful to some. Even for simple code.